Obesity exists at the complex intersection of a clinical condition and a cultural force. Clinically, it comes with a diagnosis and treatment plan. Culturally, it is influenced by beliefs, identity, and self-worth, making it deeply personal and often taboo. Families, healthcare providers, and experts tend to avoid the fraught “o-word,” opting for euphemisms instead. For families on Medicaid, these challenges are even more pronounced. Award-winning health-tech startup Clarity Pediatrics, together with designers from IDEO, IDEO.org, and with support from Rise Together Ventures, sought to uncover the obstacles to healthier lifestyles and create a free report for US pediatricians who want to bend the curve on the childhood obesity epidemic.

Research with kids and parents on Medicaid in Dallas, Texas, and California’s Bay Area, along with interviews with healthcare providers and experts across the country, uncovered stories of stigma and frustration. Parents spoke of the daily challenges of balancing multiple jobs, sourcing affordable healthy food, and finding time to make necessary lifestyle changes. They described rushed pediatric visits that left them with unclear next steps and feelings of blame. Provider conversations echoed these struggles, noting time constraints and limited follow-up options.  

Ultimately, food had become a daily torment for these families. Eating was unavoidable and also one of the few affordable indulgences low-income parents were able to provide. Once kids left their own homes, they were surrounded by unhealthy temptations, making it feel impossible for parents to maintain control. The popularity of costly new weight-loss medications and surgical procedures added another layer of complexity for families who had been underserved by—and therefore distrustful of—America’s healthcare system. With so much of the responsibility placed on parents to self-direct care, inequities deepened, adding to the burden of families already at a breaking point.

To design a path forward, IDEO and IDEO.org mapped a family’s needs before, during, and after pediatric visits. This work revealed critical parts of the journey where families needed more support: recognizing early signs of obesity, navigating provider conversations, and sustaining healthier habits at home.

These insights informed a theory of change framework that provides actionable guidance for stakeholders involved in obesity care. Grounded in three opportunity areas along the patient journey—building awareness, confidence, and capacity—the framework highlights how trust, dignity, and systemic support can lead to lasting outcomes.

IDEO and IDEO.org also developed 10 user-centered concepts spanning digital, physical, and service offerings to reduce stigma and empower families to sustain healthier lives. These ideas address dignified diagnoses and structural inequities, among other pressing issues. Complementing these concepts, IDEO created a short documentary of a mother discussing her family’s experience navigating childhood obesity to help pediatric providers—many of whom have had very different lived experiences from the families and patients they serve—better understand the realities of the daily struggles of many families on Medicaid.

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Designed for the public good, the interactive website and free downloadable report, Reimagining Childhood Obesity, contain research findings, design recommendations, and a theory of change framework. The goal: provide practical, actionable guidelines for pediatricians, educators, healthcare organizations, and innovators to meet families and kids where they are and support them as they move toward a healthier future.

21% of US children are obese. 40% of Latino youth are either overweight or obese.

26% of kids on Medicaid experience childhood obesity, compared with 11% on private insurance.

525,600 minutes: Total time per year parents spend caring for their children. 17 minutes: Average time a pediatrician spends with a child during their annual exam, a small window to address a complex chronic condition such as obesity.

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user-centered ideas to help pediatricians reduce the stigma of childhood obesity in an accessible report

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opportunity areas for building trust with young patients and providing family support

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With its reach, Acer saw an opportunity to power positive choices in the billions. ‍

But new products and services won’t succeed if consumers don’t want them, no matter how sustainable they are. A few years go, the Harvard Business Review’s report, "The Elusive Green Consumer," found that about two-thirds of those surveyed said they wanted to buy brands that advocated sustainability. But only a quarter actually did.

Meanwhile, the market for climate era products is only growing: In 2022, Forbes found that nearly 90 percent of the Gen X consumers they surveyed said they’d be willing to spend more on sustainable products, compared to just over a third two years before. The desire was only higher among Millennials and Gen Z; they just didn’t like what was on offer.

To drive sales and growth, and meet its sustainability commitments, Acer needed to capitalize on desirability, deepening the connection between Acer’s sustainable options and consumer needs, lowering the barrier to purchase. To that end, Acer and IDEO created the Acer Climate Lab, a cross-organizational team and initiative, to launch the company on a transformative journey to deepen the connection between Acer's conscious technology and the realities of people's lives and needs across four strategic areas.

Together, the combined team conducted extensive research to better understand consumer attitudes and behaviors toward sustainable products, and identified everyday areas where Acer’s conscious technology might be able to have the most significant impact: living, working, moving, and learning.

• Living: Envisions homes as hubs of energy efficiency and climate resilience, leveraging technology to optimize energy use, enhance air quality, and enable proactive climate management. These concepts include technologies like smart energy systems, adaptive air solutions, and integrated home management platforms explore how technology can support sustainable daily living.
  
  
• Working: Reimagines the workplace with flexible, sustainable technology solutions that prioritize resource optimization and circular practices. Concepts such as Acer Loop could provide a subscription-based model that ensures access to the latest technology, supports remote work, and reduces electronic waste through effective recycling and rehoming practices.
  
  
• Moving: Focuses on the transformation of urban mobility by integrating technology into systems that promote sustainable transportation. Concepts could include e-mobility hubs that highlight how urban spaces could offer seamless access to shared, low-emission travel options, reducing reliance on traditional carbon-heavy methods.
  
  
• Learning: Explores pathways to sustainable education by imagining environments where technology supports circularity and accessibility. This includes ideas like refurbished devices for students, repair and reuse programs, and educational spaces designed with climate-positive principles, nurturing eco-conscious habits in future generations.

Together with Red Peak and Sid Lee, the team launched the culmination of the work at COP28, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, positioning Acer as a pioneer in climate positive technology. The exhibit included immersive experiences and interactive displays demonstrating how Acer's sustainable solutions seamlessly integrate into everyday life. Visitors could engage with scenarios depicting sustainable living, working, moving, and learning, emphasizing the practical benefits of Acer’s innovations.

Acer's journey through the Climate Lab project underscores a commitment to sustainability that goes beyond mere compliance. With this new cross-business team tackling the real-world barriers faced by consumers, Acer is paving the way for a more inclusive, sustainable future. This initiative not only aligns with global climate goals, but also sets a precedent for the tech industry, demonstrating that with the right approach, sustainability and innovation can go hand in hand.

In a survey, 65% of respondents said they want to buy brands that advocate sustainability, yet only about 26% actually do. 

Nearly one in two consumers say they either don’t know what information to trust, or that nothing can influence how much they trust a business’s commitment to sustainability.

1 cohesive strategy

for climate era products across 6 different fields

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With the introduction of generative AI, Ethiqly and IDEO saw a unique opportunity to help teachers, by cutting down the time it takes to provide each student with feedback on their writing assignments. But to get there, they had to learn from the experts themselves. To kick off the project, the team headed into the classroom to co-design with students and teachers.

One of the first problems they discovered? Traditional methods of grading essays are laborious and inefficient for high school teachers, who are already notoriously busy and overworked. What teachers really wanted was to spend time giving each student the personalized feedback that helps them grow. Meanwhile, students really struggled to get started on their writing assignments, overwhelmed by looking at a blank page.

Together, the team started to think about how it could harness AI to make personalized instruction more accessible for all students, helping teachers provide better feedback at scale, and giving students the support they need to not only get started on their writing assignments, but improve their work. 

With insights directly from students and teachers, the IDEO team built working prototypes, allowing them to beta test the product in schools, and demonstrate value to investors. They also developed a brand identity and style guide for launch, which came to life in a pitch deck, landing page, and other brand expressions.

The resulting product is a sophisticated blend of AI technology and user-friendly interfaces that empower teachers and inspire students. The goal isn’t just to get to a finished essay, but to assist students in developing critical thinking skills. Ethiqly's tools help students organize their thoughts and get writing by providing contextual prompts and suggestions—without doing the work for them. And the AI assistant supports teachers by suggesting comments based on evaluation criteria they have set, and teachers choose which feedback is relevant for their individual students. Students never see it without teacher approval.

As one teacher told the team, “With leveraging AI more in education, there’s this fear that it’s deprofessionalizing the field or it’s a direct replacement of a teacher in a classroom. I think it gives us meaningful data, so that we can actually teach the way that we want to in order to support our students.” Now, Ethiqly is in use in classrooms in 25 countries, positively impacting students across the globe.

Teachers know 1:1 interaction is key to student success, but an EdWeek survey found only 46% of teachers’ time is spent teaching, while 25 hours/week goes to other tasks like grading and making lesson plans.

25 countries…and growing

Ethiqly’s reach in classrooms around the world

Designing a piece of a city, like a park, doesn’t start with a blank slate. There are always traces of the past and the present, and the lived history of its residents.

To create a full picture of that story, the IDEO team built workshops for the community centered around questions about the unique experiences of living in Frisco. They invited them to reflect on the communities they grew up in, the city of today, and the public spaces that have played formative roles for them. 

From their answers, a common value emerged: heritage. Frisco is a rapidly growing city, with residents whose families have lived there for centuries living side-by-side with more recent neighbors from diverse cultures and ethnic groups. Participants shared a vision of Grand Park as a unifying, shared space, a backdrop where many families can form foundational memories in Frisco.

Next, IDEO brought in multisensory design prompts to help participants further conceptualize the park. How did they want it to feel, sound, and smell? In the built-up, suburban city of Frisco, residents imagined a space that was less planned, enabling guided wandering and exploration. They also hoped that the park would inspire loved ones and descendants to feel a sense of curiosity and wonder.

At the end of workshops and sessions with community groups, the IDEO team took Polaroids of participants, asking, “What’s one word you want to describe Grand Park in the future?” Those words informed the collective vision that IDEO delivered to the city of Frisco, which included spatial concepts, user journeys, and branding for the park, all designed to showcase its unique landscapes. In January 2024, Frisco City Council approved the vision statement, and officials expect to break ground in the second half of 2025.

The population of Frisco is growing rapidly; its population is up 516% since the year 2000.

At more than 1,000 acres, Grand Park in Frisco is even larger than Central Park in New York City.

Less than 1% of Blackland Prairie soil remains in the region, and some of it is in Grand Park.

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Frisco residents were engaged in the process, from City Council members to high school students

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respondents shared anonymous feedback on what they imagined the park should be

The toymaker came to us to figure out how to make the device safe and fun. We started thinking not just in terms of physical usability (though designing for tiny hands and making sure products can survive a drop on the ground is our bread and butter), but also about how we encourage healthy engagement patterns.

A lot of VR headsets are designed to be super sticky—so engaging that users don’t want to take them off. But when we design for kids, we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create healthy interactions. We wanted the design of the View-Master to help children intuit when it was time to put the toy down. So, we decided not to include a head strap—or any other means of attaching the headset to little bodies. When kids felt their arms get tired or their eyes start to cross, they would know it was time to take a break.

Over the past four decades, the IDEO Play Lab has designed and licensed more than 250 toys and games, from classics like the Barbie Camper to the first set of Sesame Workshop smartphone apps for kids.

With every product, we think about how to design fun and engaging experiences that delight parents, entertain kids, and lead to success for our partners. But we also put a lot of thought into making design decisions that support healthy habits, and help kids—and their families—thrive. 

Here are a few examples of how we’ve navigated those design choices.

Designing for movement: Dusty Wing Control

Most of us have learned to use a joystick or a set of arrows to drive a remote-controlled toy or move a character around a screen. But when we set out to help bring the character “Dusty” from the popular Disney movie Planes to life in an action-oriented vehicle toy, we took a step back to rethink how littler kids would engage with it.

As we tested designs, we saw that small children not only struggled with small buttons and the spatial skills necessary to operate the typical remote control joystick, but also that there was no fun in sitting still and tapping buttons. Instead, during our design research sessions, kids pretended to be the characters: They went full airplane mode, hands stretched out, zooming around the living room, dodging furniture. 

Taking a cue from their play patterns, we put Dusty’s remote control mechanism in toy wing tips that fit on little hands, enabling them to interact in a way that is not only more fun, but also instinctive, better mirroring how they naturally play. Players drive Dusty forward by pressing and holding a controller button, enabling his propellers to spin. When they bank left and right, Dusty matches their every move. Dusty even calls out flying commands that they can perform together.  The toy is not just easy for them to operate; it also gets them off the couch and moving, playing the main character in their own stories.

Designing for confidence: Pictionary Air

When we set out to re-invent the classic drawing game for the digital age, we had to figure out how to bring the core interaction to life in a new way. During ethnographic research, we noticed that when players were under pressure, they would often stare at their drawings looking embarrassed, and hesitate to keep drawing. To get people out of their heads and back in the game, we designed a new interaction that keeps participants looking up and laughing with each other. We combined a light pen and a smart device’s camera to allow picturists to create life-size illustrations in the air in front of them, an early foray into AR for classic games. For another layer of fun—and another option for those with less confidence in their drawing skills—players could interact with their sketches to provide more clues, much like in charades. We also decided to make drawings disappear quickly after each round was finished, to lower the stakes for self-conscious players.

Designing for all ages: Twister Air

In classic Twister, the fun hits when players are frozen in contortionist poses, hovering and balancing over each other. Our challenge from Hasbro: What does Twister look like in the TikTok era? And how do we make it fun for everyone? As we tested out potential interactions, we observed that for younger kids and older adults (basically everyone but the teenagers), the choreography on most popular dances was a bit much to learn or to even attempt. While kids found it hilarious when parents messed up (you’ll see lots of dance flops posted online!), we also wanted to find a way to create a sense of achievement for all ages. We started looking for the sweet spot between silly fun and accessibility, stretching players just enough to make them feel challenged, but not too overwhelmed to keep trying. In our prototypes, we preserved the classic Twister interaction while building in opportunities for rockstar moments where players can flop or shine. The footage made for viral family group chat nuggets, helping everyone feel part of the fun.

Designing for development: Little People Klip Klops

Preschoolers love the action of cars zipping down racetracks. But typical matchbox cars move too quickly for their little hands and slow reaction times.  When we set out to create a similar action-oriented—but also character-driven—toy for Little People, we needed to figure out how to slow down the experience, without sacrificing the action. Through several rounds of prototyping, we built out Klip Klops, leveraging a very simple mechanism that allowed princesses on ponies to teeter back and forth down a ridged downward track. By centering  the “clip clop” sounds of the hooves and building out a multi-story castle setting where the princesses and their steeds would live, we created opportunities for kids to enjoy the intentionality of the movement and built in the space for layered storytelling, allowing little kids to practice multiple development skills at once.

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Navigating your own toy design journey, or trying to get your team at work to stretch its imagination? Get in touch at helloplaylab@ideo.com. We’d love to collaborate.

Almost a decade ago, when we were all exploring VR of the early aughts, Mattel set out to redesign its classic View-Master as an affordable VR headset for a new generation of kids.

Wagashi is a traditional Japanese dessert considered to embody a microcosm of time, space, and nature, typically made of agar, water, and sugar. In this coffee shop, each dessert features a main ingredient—berries, citrus, chocolate—that determines its primary flavor, with an added twist: the addition of a layer of coffee, which corresponds to the carbon footprint associated with producing this main ingredient. The higher the carbon footprint, the higher the level of coffee in the dessert, and the more bitter it tastes. You can see and taste it.

Making Data Feel Real

This is the concept behind DataWagashi, the design-tech project I collaborated on with Boston-based design technologist Iyang Huang. DataWagashi invites people to experience the future of data communication by bringing climate data to life through all the senses. We go beyond traditional visuals by incorporating taste, smell, texture, and physical interaction, expanding the vocabulary for how we understand and interact with data. With DataWagashi, data transforms from numbers on a screen to a vivd and engaging multisensory journey.

Fighting Data Fatigue

In today's world, the constant doom and gloom surrounding climate change can make it feel overwhelming and disconnected from our daily lives. The complexity of climate data, which is often presented through numbers, charts, and preaching, only adds to this detachment, making the information hard to relate to our senses and emotions. We wanted to find a new, better way to raise awareness about these important issues, and make data communication more intuitive, enjoyable, and fun. So we turned to food, a universally-loved and relatable medium, to make complex environmental data more accessible, foster empathy, and empower people to make better choices. But food is just one of many creative media we can use to overcome data fatigue and craft engaging data stories through design.

One way we can think about changing how we present information is by transforming text-based information into something capable of carrying multimodal information—like edible objects, but also, sounds, lights, responsive wearables, and much more. Instead of just making a deck that tells people there has been a 20-degree sea water temperature increase, why not design a way for people to directly feel the difference? Imagine experiencing wildfires not through statistics, but by tasting the severity of raging flames through a range of spicy dishes, hearing the before and after of dwindling forest chorus, and touching the roughness of the scorched grass. By physicalizing data, we translate numbers back into experiences that can be seen, touched, and felt, connecting more deeply with the real world.

Introducing the Phygital Experience

The integration of Generative AI into storytelling introduces a new blend across digital and physical platforms, enabling us to transform large-scale datasets into tangible Wagashi forms. Setting up a few lines of mapping rules allows the data—whether static, real-time, or customized by user input—to dynamically manifest across multiple formats such as graphics, text, sound, and food, bridging the gap between digital information and physical entities. These entities could be data-driven recipes, playlists that shift with real-time data trends, algorithmically-woven textiles, ambience gadgets that adapt to environmental changes, and vending machines that dispense data-inspired poems on bamboo paper, making abstract data interactively tangible. 

This approach opens up various real-world use cases and applications in everyday lives, from creating customized dessert recipes and generating climate sonatas to sending personalized gift packages.

The importance of data empathy

DataWagashi is also about democratizing data. By turning data into physical, sensory experiences, we can break down information barriers, ensuring that people with varying data literacy levels can grasp the complex concepts and join in on conversations about climate change and environmental impact. This redesign of data presentation fosters understanding among diverse groups across ages, cultures, and professional training, creating a fair environment for dialogue and learning, and making the intricate world of data an experience open to all.

Soon, you might walk into your favorite cafe and order desserts not by ingredients, but by picking up a menu called "Biodiversity Forecast in 60 years," and choosing from "Rainforest," "Desert," or "Ocean." Maybe you’ll have a weekly smoothie subscription that alters its formula based on a synthesis of the average air quality (climate data) and how active you are (personal health tracking data). The next day, a box of unique foods arrives, driven by your data choices, offering delightful surprises. This not only gives you a tasty treat but also connects you to a bigger data story, inspiring awareness and action.

Heading to SXSW 2024? Meet up with us at DataWagashi: Feeling Climate Data through New Design Medium, and learn more about how we can make the data tangible in the most flavorful way for a better climate future.

Picture this: You walk into your favorite coffee shop, check out the desserts, and choose which one to order based on its carbon footprint—just by looking at the confection itself.

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We interviewed dozens of leaders of innovation, design, and new product teams at multibillion-dollar companies in search of clues as to where the trouble starts: When funding was cut?  When teams were reassigned? When groups were dissolved? 

Our research uncovered five reasons that innovation portfolios fail—and tips for making sure it doesn’t happen at your company.

#1 The black hole of undefined strategy

In work we did with a Fortune 500 shipping company several years ago, executives decided that the company needed a global innovation team. They committed millions of dollars, hired a startup leader, and assigned 25 people to the team. The startup founder built them a venture based on a new technology that tracks packages. In its first year, that innovation alone made the shipping company tens of millions of dollars.

But when review time came around, executives told the leader they were dissatisfied. Why hadn’t this team done anything to evolve the company’s core offerings? Why had they broken rules inside the company? They fired the leader, even though the higher-ups hadn’t articulated to the team—or to each other—what successful innovation looked like. 

Often, this misdirect starts with undefined strategy at the top. Innovation strategy requires a different type of conversation: less focused on big-picture goals; more focused on strategic planning, like how to invest and pursue goals over the next year. It starts with this question: What are the outcomes we want from this work?

#2 The peril of orphaned innovations

All too often, a company creates an innovation team, but doesn’t connect it with the company’s core business. That can create an innovation orphanage: ideas developed in isolation that lack the necessary resources and support to be successful. 

We witnessed this on a project with a large automotive company. It had recently acquired a startup that offered private work shuttles.  They brought IDEO in to lead an innovation lab around new product possibilities. Together, we built a new venture: a commute benefit that the company could sell to employers to better leverage the startup’s fleet of private work shuttles. But after six months of generating revenue and trying to sell it to the broader startup, it still wasn’t in their pipeline.

The problem was misaligned incentives: The CEO of the automotive company had tasked the innovation to a standalone team, without bringing in the decision makers at the startup. When there’s no ownership or investment from the departments that the innovation is meant to serve, great ideas go nowhere. Instead, leaders need to create a process for identifying and nurturing promising innovations, and define who owns the outcomes and makes implementation decisions before the innovation even begins. 

#3 The risk of the wrong talent

By definition, innovation requires new approaches. It often requires new talent, too. Think of the classic example of IBM, often taught by professors Charles O’Reilly and Michael Tushman in their work on ambidextrous organizations. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the technology giant would invest in new innovation efforts, like the personal computer, but the company was never able to commercialize or scale the product. IBM’s business leaders didn’t have an entrepreneurial mindset—the company needed talent who had experience taking big swings.

We recently saw this play out at a food manufacturing company. They wanted to try an agile approach to developing new products and tasked a team of operators from the core business to make it happen. The team developed a new breakfast product, which tested well with consumers. But they didn’t feel confident enough to advance to piloting it without further data. Why? The internal team had never launched a new product from scratch, and they were terrified of screwing up. 

To avoid the talent trap, it helps to think about three different roles in a workplace: explorers, scalers, and optimizers (with credit to Bud Caddell and Simon Wardley). Optimizers make up about 90 percent of employees; they drive growth and improve operations across the core of an established business. Explorers work in departments like R&D and product development, and are good at spotting new opportunities and developing ideas. Scalers iterate on ideas until they find the right product-market fit. All three roles are essential, but shine at different parts of the innovation process. Explorers work best within innovation teams, until they can pass off an idea to scalers for development; scalers can then institute new processes and tools for optimizers to use within the workplace. 

#4 The troubles of a bad handoff 

When company leaders get excited about an innovation, it can be tempting to go for an ad hoc implementation, rather than moving through clear internal steps. But the wrong handoff can lead to inconsistencies and inefficiencies. The baton gets dropped. That’s why it’s necessary to design a clear innovation process for how to generate, evaluate, and implement ideas. Here’s a guide to the handoff models we see most often—and when to use them:

‍The Owner’s Manual: After months (sometimes years!) of work, an innovation team hands extensive documentation over to a new team, which is meant to execute their vision. But be honest: When is the last time you actually read an owner’s manual cover-to-cover? Exactly. This model can work if the innovation doesn’t need to be directly developed by others (insights from a research group, for example), but it doesn’t work well for a new product, where it can turn into a knowledge dropoff.

The Architect: The future owner of the work embeds with the innovation team. That way, they can share the insights from the development process with the new team. This model works well for industries like consumer packaged goods, where a brand manager is responsible for product development from beginning to end.

The Ambassadors: Members from each stage of the innovation embed throughout the project, ensuring that no learning is lost and each phase of work feeds smoothly into the next. This model also builds an awareness of what downstream teams most need.

The Hive: Each project functions as a microcosm of the business, where multidisciplinary teams tackle a challenge from beginning to end. This is common in accelerators and incubators, since they often set up new organizations as microcosms of a parent company, made up of people from every major function.

#5 The danger of short-term metrics

In our experience, innovation teams often have a three-year lifespan. During the first year, everyone is excited, encouraging the innovation team to swing big. By the second year, company leaders are asking, what are your results so far? By the third year, a lot of the top executives have changed seats, and the new leadership doesn’t see a meaningful effect on their core business, so they decide to shut it down.

It’s a short-sighted move: This kind of work often takes years to show impact on metrics like revenue, loyalty, or customer satisfaction. The labs can still show value in the short-term, though, by demonstrating how the work drives efficiency or changes behavior.

This brings us back to the head of innovation at the shipping company, the one who created a startup that netted millions, but got fired because the team hadn’t evolved the company’s core offerings. To avoid this trap, companies need to establish clear metrics to assess progress over time—the number of prototypes a team develops, experiments they run, employee retention or external reputation. Otherwise, you’re cutting down the tree you planted three years ago, before it even had a chance to bear fruit.

Falling into an innovation trap of your own? We’d love to chat with you about it.

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(Images created with Midjourney)

A few years ago, we led a project to investigate a question: Where does innovation go wrong?

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At a time when everyone was concerned about kids using AI to cheat, they wanted to discover how it could enhance learning and teaching for the better.

While we immersed ourselves in the traditional design process—sketching, interacting with students and teachers, and finding inspiration out in the world—it became clear that understanding the AI that underpinned the product was critical to our success. So we dove into using the underlying technology ourselves.

The data scientist on our team started by constructing a simplified Python version of one of Ethiqly's significant features—structured feedback for teachers to share with students—allowing it to interface with a language learning model (LLM). Then, with the help of software designers, we rebuilt and evolved this proof-of-concept prototype to be a real, usable, multi-featured demo of two of the core interaction loops, so that we could test it in research sessions with students and teachers. 

The demo became an invaluable tool to uncover student and teacher feedback, to test the look and feel of a new product, and to glean the real capabilities of the underlying technology. In creating the demo, we realized the importance of being able to prototype generative AI products as quickly and as collaboratively as possible.

At IDEO, we believe in augmented intelligence—that it’s possible to bring more delight, ease, creativity, and impact to human work through technology, including AI. To do this responsibly, it’s important to bring a multiplicity of perspectives to the design of these tools. By building a lightweight system that allows designers without technical backgrounds to prototype with LLMs, we could bring more voices, eyes, and hands into the AI-driven product design process. We also shortened our time to first prototype from weeks to days. 

ChatGPT: A Tool, Not Just a Trend

Using ChatGPT’s interface can be powerful on its own, but what’s not as well known is that the systems behind it can smooth the process for product development. But for casual users of ChatGPT’s browser or app-based interface, there’s little opportunity to learn about how it works on the back end. It also comes with privacy concerns. It’s clear that more and more of our clients need us to understand firsthand what creating LLM-enabled products feels like, and it’s equally clear that we need to explore how LLMs can push the edges of our own creative process.

So, I designed a simple prototyping interface that shows a little more of the guts behind the chatbox. The goal? To help IDEOers better understand how LLMs, and OpenAI’s APIs in particular, work behind the scenes, building their intuition about what the current spate of AI tools are good at, and what they’re not.  

The prototyper interface also adds convenient features like saving a  conversation state—allowing designers to download and share their conversation history and rewind to earlier states to try out new content—to encourage the development and sharing of useful and delightful patterns. I named the tool GPT Prototyper.

Teaching Through Prototyping

While using GPT Prototyper’s interface doesn’t involve any coding, it does show its users more about the parts and pieces that can be configured to refine and expand OpenAI’s conversational abilities, from the system note (background information that shapes the LLM’s responses), to the temperature (the sampling scheme that controls the randomness of the responses), and even accessing an external service through function calls (commands the LLM can send that connect it to abilities beyond text prediction).

We’ve created comprehensive video tutorials, interactive Q&A sessions, and embedded usage hints within the Prototyper to make these capabilities more understandable to everyone at IDEO. Every designer, irrespective of their technical proficiency, can now contribute to the evolution of intelligence platforms, thereby ushering in a new era of digital product behavior.

If it sounds theoretical—it’s not. We’ve used customized versions of the Prototyper to demonstrate how LLMs can work within product and service concepts for work in industries ranging from finance to consumer goods. 

Since its debut last June, the prototyper has also helped us explore more future-facing ideas, like when we gave a pair of vintage Levi’s jeans a personality and history, letting prospective customers learn about how the jeans were made and where they were worn through conversation. We’ve also used it in service of our ongoing research into Gen Z’s relationship to GenAI.

Having the GPT Prototyper means that teams no longer have to wonder if an interaction is possible–they simply build it and give it a try. 

A Glimpse into Tomorrow

Pushing beyond simple productivity gains and into innovation and creativity requires understanding—at least to some degree—of how LLMs work. Tools like the GPT Prototyper are bringing intentionality and speed to our explorations, helping our clients push farther and faster into new possibilities for growth. The tool is also making it possible for us to explore client work without sharing confidential information with unvetted tools—something both we and our clients care deeply about.

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Want to learn more about creating a tool for your organization? Get in touch.

Last spring, my team and I partnered with Ethiqly, an education startup looking to explore how AI might help students learn how to be better writers.

I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.